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  I wince, and the thing seems to adjust itself until it’s only exerting a dull pressure along the back of my head. A slight tingling sensation dances over my scalp, and the device starts to vibrate.

  I meet Jonah’s gaze with an expression of panic. I’m not enjoying this at all.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “It’ll be over soon.”

  “What will?” I squeak. “What’s it doing?”

  “Just relax.”

  I open my mouth and stare incredulously. How the hell am I supposed to relax? I want to rip the thing off my head, but then the uncomfortable vibrations stop, and the sudden lack of motion gives me a feeling of unease.

  “All right,” says Jonah, maneuvering around the table and leading me back into the gym. “Let’s go again.”

  “Are you serious?”

  My arms feel as though they’ve been filled with molten lead, and my legs are dangerously wobbly. I didn’t finish my lunch, and my body is running on empty.

  Jonah ignores my misgivings. “This time, I’m going to throw some strikes at you. I don’t want you to worry about hitting me back. Your only job is to defend yourself.”

  I groan. I feel as though I’m going to be sick. Jonah wants to punch me now?

  “You can wear your headgear if it makes you feel better,” he says.

  Steeling myself for the worst, I cram the headgear back on over the creepy device and secure the Velcro straps.

  We square off in the ring, and Jonah gives me a reassuring nod.

  “It’s going to be better this time,” he says. “Just . . . trust yourself.”

  I let out a derisive laugh. Trust myself? I’ve been at this for less than three weeks. How the hell am I supposed to trust myself?

  Still, it seems as though I don’t have a choice. Jonah’s not letting me leave here with my pride intact.

  I raise my hands and tuck my chin, bracing myself for a punch.

  “You have to keep your eyes open,” he says, his voice rough with irritation.

  “I know,” I say. I force myself not to squint, but it’s tough when every one of my muscles is locked in a full-body cringe.

  A second later, Jonah throws out a jab, and miraculously my head slips to the side. It isn’t one of my clumsy ducks. My head only moves a couple of inches, and I feel his glove breeze past my face.

  I reposition my feet, and he throws a double jab followed by a cross. My feet move without consulting my brain, and my glove shoots up to parry the cross as though I’d been expecting it.

  We move around the ring in a slow circle, my arms and legs firing in perfect synchronicity. I block a punch, slip a jab — even counter a kick meant to take out my front leg.

  I manage to avoid every single one of his strikes. My mind is officially blown.

  Jonah ramps up the intensity, and I don’t have time to think. He fakes a cross and aims a kick at my head, and my left hand shoots up to grab the leg that’s airborne.

  I take his other leg out from under him. He hits the mat with a surprising thud and springs back up before I have a chance to process what just happened. I shoot in with a combination of my own, and I feel a strange electricity moving through my body.

  Jonah told me to focus on defending, but I have an urge to counter him. It’s as though an invisible actor has taken up residence inside my body. It’s weird and kind of creepy, but I don’t fight the sensation.

  Jonah deflects my first two strikes as though he’d been expecting them, but the third is too quick. My uppercut catches him right under the chin, and he staggers back in a daze.

  I try another combo, but this time, he’s ready. He dips to the side to avoid my cross and comes in with a hard hit to the body. I throw an elbow down to protect my ribs, but I still feel his fist dig into the padding of my vest.

  At the moment of contact, Jonah seems to come to his senses. He backs up — his expression apologetic — but the damage is already done.

  I don’t think. I just act. A new energy is thrumming inside of me, egging me on and overriding my senses. I turn over my shoulder and swing my body counterclockwise — elbow poised to do real damage.

  I spin my body around in a full three-sixty, bashing him cleanly in the mouth. Jonah backs away, and I know I got him good.

  His lip is bloody. He’s doubled over, and I feel a surge of triumph followed by regret.

  “I’m sorry!” I blurt, backing away.

  What the hell did I just do?

  “It’s okay,” he grunts, visibly stunned but trying to play it off.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeat, horrified by what I’ve done.

  Jonah’s got blood on his teeth. His lip is cut, and it’s already swelling.

  “Don’t be.”

  I open my mouth to say something else, but then my guilt starts to morph into anger.

  That wasn’t me. I would never do something like that. It has got to be this thing that’s attached itself to my skull, but I don’t know how that’s possible.

  I peel off my gloves, throw my headgear to the ground, and fumble around the back of my head.

  “Don’t —” Jonah blurts.

  But it’s too late. I yank the device away from my skull, and I feel the little wire legs catch in my hair. It’s almost like an alien parasite desperately clinging to its host, and I want nothing to do with it.

  I yank the thing out, and a few strands of hair separate from my scalp. I throw it to the ground and step back in revolt.

  “What the hell is that thing?” I growl, glaring at Jonah with unrestrained fury.

  “The Space Force’s newest toy,” he grumbles, spitting out a glob of blood and wiping his mouth on his arm. “A gift from Maverick designed to expedite training.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s called a SPIDER,” he explains. “It uses simulated motor-memory encoding to help people learn faster.”

  “Are you saying . . .” My head is throbbing dully, making it difficult to think. “Are you saying that that thing was teaching me?”

  Jonah shrugs. “In a way. Really, I was teaching you. You just didn’t know it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” It sounds as though he’s saying that he — Jonah — was in my head pulling the strings. But that’s too creepy to be real.

  “It can only teach you things the master brain has recorded,” he says, teeth still bloody. “It sends the signal to your brain hundreds of times a minute. I’ve been sparring with it for the past few days, but I hadn’t tried it with its pair until now.”

  “So you used me as your guinea pig?” I snap. “Thanks a lot.”

  He laughs, and I want to deck him. I am absolutely livid. That thing was burrowing into my brain, which is the definition of invasive.

  “You could have warned me!” I cry. “I had no idea what was going to happen.”

  “I did,” says Jonah. “Well, not everything that was going to happen . . .”

  “I could have really hurt you!”

  “No, you couldn’t have.”

  “Why not? You were basically sparring with yourself.”

  He shrugs. “Basically.”

  “That’s a little narcissistic, don’t you think?”

  Jonah chuckles, and I find the sound simultaneously infectious and infuriating. The throbbing in my temples has morphed into a splitting headache, and the pain seems to be stoking my anger.

  I cross my arms over my chest. “You couldn’t defend that last move, though.”

  “That move can’t be defended,” he says matter-of-factly. “No one ever sees it coming.”

  I roll my eyes. “God, you are full of yourself.”

  “Hey, it worked,” he says, crossing over from indulgent to annoyed. “In three minutes you learned to execute moves I couldn’t teach you in three weeks. A little gratitude would be nice.”

  “Gratitude?” I snarl, not caring that I’m dancing on the edge of insubordination. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Watch yourse
lf, Jones . . .”

  But I am past the point of no return. I point at the device on the ground, which is still glowing in an otherworldly sort of way. “That thing hacked my brain!” I screech. “It got inside my head and made me do things that I . . .”

  “That you’d otherwise be incapable of?” Jonah finishes.

  I shake my head. He is the worst. I’m glad that I busted his lip.

  But Jonah’s expression is growing stormy. “Listen,” he growls, clearly done with his version of Mr. Nice Guy. “I don’t have time to deal with your feelings. I have five privates to train, and you are by far the most behind. If you want to learn — if you want to survive here — this thing is the answer. If you can’t or won’t work with me, I will personally escort you to the captain to request a discharge. Is that understood?”

  I just stare at him, stewing in my own tangled mess of emotions.

  I want to tell Jonah to go fuck himself. I want to waltz out of that gym, slam the door behind me, and then storm back in and yell at him some more. I want to slap him and screw him — all at the same time — but you don’t mouth off to your sergeant and expect to keep your position.

  Taking a deep breath, I school my expression and temper the tone of my voice. “Yes, sir,” I growl. “Whatever you say.”

  24

  Jonah

  After my training session with Maggie, my head is all messed up. I dismiss her for dinner and head back to my pod to shower. My mind is working overtime thinking about Maverick’s creepy simulated learning devices, but it’s Maggie that keeps invading my thoughts.

  She took to the technology better than I could have hoped, though I’m still not sure that will be enough. It depends how well her brain retains those encoded sequences and builds on what she’s already learned.

  I grab my hygiene kit from my room and go straight to the latrine. I can’t stop thinking about the way she moved.

  I don’t know what it is about her . . . It was hot. I can’t figure her out, which is probably why I find her alluring.

  I turn the shower on and step into the hot stream, and suddenly it’s as if she’s right there with me. She’s standing across from me with her guard up, looking as though she’d fight a fucking bear. She’s got those springy blond curls falling into her eyes — so much ferocity in such a feminine package.

  I don’t know if it’s the way she moves or the way she smells . . . All I know is that I’ve never been enlisted with someone like her.

  A surge of heat starts in my chest and travels all the way down to my toes. I feel like a creep for some of the thoughts that flash through my mind: Maggie working out in just a sports bra and a tiny pair of shorts. Maggie on her back, those infuriating curls freed from their bun and splayed out behind her. Maggie naked, pressed up against the shower wall while I —

  I shake my head to shut out the images bombarding my brain. The hot water isn’t helping, so I switch the tap to cold.

  The shower turns icy, and the full-body shiver that rolls through me is enough to dampen my dirty thoughts. I stick my face under the frigid stream and watch the blood from our sparring session wash down the drain in a trail of pink.

  Something happened when I put that SPIDER thing on Maggie. I shared a little of myself with her. As we sparred, I could practically see my own thoughts lighting up her neural pathways, tripping her wires and moving her body in a way that I had designed.

  Suddenly I’m hit with another storm of filthy thoughts. I plant my feet right under the cold stream of water until my brain is completely frozen.

  I step out of the shower and wrap a towel around my waist, but those fierce blue-green eyes are back in my brain. It’s like she’s standing there mocking me in those big nerdy glasses . . .

  Wait. Glasses? Maggie doesn’t wear glasses . . .

  My brain seizes with the effort of recalling a half-forgotten memory: the girl who came to my room to claim her lost cargo. She was blond with glasses and those same striking eyes.

  I stop dead in my tracks. That’s why she looked so goddamned familiar. I’d seen Maggie Jones before.

  Walking back to my room fully clothed, I try to remember what day she came to my room. It had to have been one of the first days of Reception, but it doesn’t make any sense.

  “Heyya, sarge!”

  I jump at the intrusion and turn slowly on the spot.

  “Not now, Ping,” I grumble. I can feel my realization slipping away from me, along with the trail of memories I was using to piece it all together.

  “Whoa . . . You all right?”

  “Fine,” I say. I am not in the mood.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  I slip away from Ping’s probing gaze and try to get back to my room.

  “What happened?” he asks, jogging along behind me.

  That’s when I realize he’s referring to my busted lip.

  “Nothing,” I lie. “Just a little sparring session.”

  “Sweet!” says Ping. “Maggie do that to you?”

  At the mention of Maggie, I feel all my walls come up. I’m ashamed by the thoughts that flashed through my mind, but there’s something about her presence here that just doesn’t feel right.

  “You eaten dinner yet, boss?” asks Ping, still brandishing his fists in a mock boxing stance.

  “Not yet,” I mutter, instantly realizing my mistake.

  “Great!” says Ping. “The rest of the privates went without me. No reason two criminally handsome guys like us should eat our dinner alone.”

  I don’t have the heart to tell him no. At least he’ll take my mind off her.

  “Why didn’t you eat with the rest of the squad?” I ask.

  “I thought I’d get some yoga in before I ate. Gotta stay spry for the ladies.”

  I press my lips together to hold back a laugh. What is it with this kid?

  “But the class was cancelled, so . . . here I am.”

  “Can I ask you something?” I say in a low voice. I know I’m going to regret bringing Ping into the fold, but I don’t know anyone else I can ask.

  “Anything, sarge.”

  I hesitate. Ping’s a little too eager to hear what I have to say, but I have a feeling he’ll keep his mouth shut. “This stays between you and me. Understand?”

  “Of course.”

  I take a deep breath. “You notice anything strange about Private Jones?”

  “Maggie?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ping’s eyebrows shoot up, and he’s overcome with a look I know only too well — a look that makes me instantly want to deck him.

  “I know she is fine.” He chuckles. “Is that what you mean?”

  “No,” I growl, giving him a sharp look. “I mean . . . Have you noticed anything off about her? Anything suspicious?”

  Ping shakes his head. “Nah. She seems cool.”

  “Yeah, I know she seems cool,” I say. “But have you noticed anything that’s different about her compared to the others? Does she ever talk about what she did before this? Maybe an old job or her family?”

  “Nah. I don’t think so. I’ll tell you one thing, though . . . She is smokin’ hot. She’s got this sexy librarian vibe . . .”

  I want to smack him upside the head. I don’t know why I’m having such a visceral response to Ping’s pervy comments, but it’s making me think I don’t know my own mind.

  Luckily, we reach the dining hall before I have a chance to delve too deep into those thoughts. Dinner is a crusty spoonful of mac and cheese and a few soggy chicken tenders, but after my training session with Maggie, I’m hungry enough to eat anything.

  A few officers are gathered around one of the long tables near the back, but Ping and I take a seat at an empty table on the other side of the dining hall. I’d rather eat with Ping than Whitehead and Jameson any day.

  Bots are roaming between the rows, running a long squeegee down the center of a table to sweep off the crumbs. Ping is absolutely beside himself when we sit down across from
each other, and I get a pang of guilt that I haven’t been nicer to the kid.

  He dashes off to the condiment bar and returns with a bottle of hot sauce. At first I think he’s going to use it on his chicken tenders, but then he upends the bottle over his mac and cheese.

  “You put that stuff on macaroni?”

  “You should try it. It’s amazing.”

  “Pass,” I say, poking at the stiff lump of noodles with the edge of my fork.

  Suddenly, I hear someone hush the loud table full of officers. I turn around. Jameson is standing on his chair, trying to adjust the volume on one of the enormous screens mounted to the wall.

  The voice of the reporter gets louder and louder, and then all of the screens in the cafeteria switch to show the forty-something guy standing on a city street. Fires are blazing all around him, and I can see people running and screaming in the background.

  Ping stops talking mid-sentence and turns to look at the nearest screen.

  The situation here is very frightening. People are fleeing Millennium Park, where there are reports of attacks coming from a group of armed security bots. We don’t have any information yet on who might be behind these attacks, but we do know that these are bots made by BlumBot International, a subsidiary of Maverick Enterprises.

  The screen switches to a news anchor in the studio — heavily made up and wearing a grave expression. Thank you, Mike. We do have footage of the first few minutes of this attack, which we are about to show you. Viewer discretion is advised. This footage is disturbing.

  The screen flips to some security-cam footage of Millennium Park in Chicago, where three bots are plowing through the park with their stunners blazing.

  I’ve interacted with these types of bots. The army uses them for bomb disposal, and they were patrolling the airport the last time I flew out of JFK.

  They aren’t like the bots milling around the cafeteria. They don’t have friendly silicone faces designed to look like people or carry squeegees for light cleaning.

  These bots have the same humanoid bone structure but none of the bells and whistles. Each of their faces is a clockwork maze of metal, and they’re outfitted in solid black armor that’s supposed to be bulletproof. They come from the factory equipped with stun guns, but I’ve heard they can be programmed to shoot rifles, too.